CIA Director Leon Panetta addresses reporters during a briefing in the East Room. Photo: REUTERS

CIA boss Leon Panetta said he feared that Pakistan could have undermined the operation involving Osama bin Laden by leaking word to the terror lord, according to a bombshell interview.

Months before Panetta ordered General William McRaven, the head of the Joint Special Forces Command, to undertake the mission last Friday, the CIA director had decided to leave Pakistani authorities out of it.

Panetta told Time.com in an interview posted today that the US had “decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission.”

The US had at one point also looked at utilizing a bombing raid over the compound or launching a “direct shot” with cruise missiles, but ruled those options out because of the possibility of “too much collateral,” Panetta said in his first interview since bin Laden was killed on Sunday.

In a statement released today, Pakistan said it was deeply concerned over what it said was an “unauthorized” American raid that killed bin Laden. The government statement said the raid should not serve as a precedent for future US actions in the country.

“Neither any base nor facility inside Pakistan was used by the US forces, nor the Pakistan Army provided any operational or logistic assistance to these operations conducted by the U.S. forces,” the ministry said. “This event of unauthorized unilateral action cannot be taken as a rule.”

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, issuing his first response to questions about how the world’s most-wanted militant was able to live for so long in comfort and undetected near Islamabad, did little to dispel suspicions.

“Some in the US press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing,” Zardari wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. “Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn’t reflect fact.”

However, the al Qaeda leader lived and died in a massive, fortified compound built in 2005 and located on the outskirts of Abbottabad, some 60 miles from the capital of Islamabad. It stood just a half-mile from the Kakul Military Academy, Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point, and close to various army regiments.

Amid the high praise for the successful US operation, congressional Republicans and Democrats questioned whether bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, with Pakistani military and intelligence operatives either totally unaware of his location or willfully ignoring his presence to protect him.

After months of intelligence work, Panetta said they had enough “circumstantial evidence” that bin Laden was living in the compound.

Early last month, Panetta met with Pakistan’s intelligence chief, Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, a meeting Washington officials saw as make or break.

The Obama administration said it was negotiating a possible reduction in US intelligence operatives and special operations officers in Pakistan as they sought to ease Pakistani concerns about spy activity.

Unaware and unnerved Pakistanis scrambled their aircraft in the wake of the U.S. military intervention.

Publicly, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton thanked Pakistan for its cooperation and said the country “has contributed greatly to our efforts to dismantle al Qaeda.”

She said that “in fact, cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding.”

John Brennan, White House counterterrorism adviser, said the administration was looking at whether bin Laden had a support system in Pakistan that allowed him to remain in the country.

“We know that the people at the compound there were working on his behalf, and that’s how we ultimately found our way to that compound,” Brennan told reporters at the White House on Monday.

“We are talking with the Pakistanis on a regular basis now, and we’re going to pursue all leads to find out exactly what type of support system and benefactors that bin Laden might have had.”

Prior to the mission, Panetta said there were fears. In a meeting with advisors last week, Panetta said he wanted to get their opinions on the potential mission to capture the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

“What if you go down and you’re in a fire fight and the Pakistanis show up and start firing?” Panetta said some feared. “How do you fight your way out?”

But Panetta concluded the evidence was strong enough to risk the raid and decided to make his case to President Obama.

“We have the best evidence since [the 2001 battle of] Tora Bora [where bin Laden was last seen], and that then makes it clear that we have an obligation to act,” Panetta said he told the president, according to Time.com.

Panetta and his team watched the raid in a conference room in Langley, Va., at the same time as President Obama and his advisors followed along in a separate room at the White House.

Panetta said the room he was in broke into applause once the choppers left with bin Laden’s body.

The CIA chief said that after the mission was successfully completed, US commandos were able to collect an “impressive amount” of material from the compound. The materials are now being reviewed by his staff and intelligence officials.